


Drabbles: On the Nature of Being Spock

by Ywain Penbrydd (penbrydd)



Category: Star Trek: 2009, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Angst, Drabble Collection, Family, Fighting, Gen, Love, Spiritual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-13
Updated: 2009-08-29
Packaged: 2017-10-04 08:03:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penbrydd/pseuds/Ywain%20Penbrydd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of Spock-centric drabbles, on a variety of subjects. Some are for spock100, over on LJ, others are not. Extra bonus points if you can tell nu!Spock from Spock!Prime, because I'm probably not going to tell you which ones are which.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Solitude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Characters:** Spock  
> **Rating:** PG  
> **Warnings:** None  
> **Notes:** For the prompt "wind" over at **spock100**.

* * *

He'd gone, that night, to the recreation room, as he did, those times when he was sure no one would be looking -- when no one would want to use it for sports or hour-long beach vacations -- when he was certain no one would ask him what he'd been doing. It was no one's business, but his own, he thought, folding his clothes beside the door, before stepping to the centre of the room and engaging the program.

In a quick flash of light, he stood atop a high, red mountain, at the heart of his family's land, on Vulcan -- a place he'd never been allowed to play, as a child, since it was only used for ceremonial purposes. (And in the back of his head, he also knew he would only be allowed on that mountain once in his life, since he was not truly Vulcan.) He spread his arms to the feathery desert wind, letting the breath of his homeworld caress his skin like no lover ever could. The red sand scraped lightly against his skin, like tiny lovebites from the planet itself, as the heavy heat of the sun lay across his shoulders like a furnace-hot hand.

No, he was not all Vulcan, and he never would be, doing irrational things like this, but he didn't suppose that mattered nearly as much as being able to calm that human sense of loneliness with the touch of a home he had no right to know.


	2. Solitude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Characters:** Spock**  
> Rating:** PG**  
> Warnings:** Religion  
> **Notes:** For the crackmeme. Someone asked for insight into the crew's religious preferences; I took Spock, because he's so fucking easy to write. Also, I am a desert-dwelling vegetarian, so I kinda feel the vibe, here.

* * *

**From crackmeme prompt:**  
tl;dr What are the religious beliefs of the various Enterprise crew members?

* * *

Water is life. It is the lesson of the desert, one learned by all who survive it. When the very act of living is an imposition of force and will upon one's very environment, logic is an essential part of survival, but water is deeper even than that.

When the sky breaks open, over Vulcan, every inhabitant of the affected area dances, nude, in the streets. It is a rare ceremony, one that happens daily during the monsoons, but with memorable infrequency, outside the raining time. Every child learns the dance, its every motion designed to expose as much skin as possible to the falling water. Where Spock grew up, in ShiKahr, in the valley below the mountains that held his family's ceremonial lands, the rain fell more often than it did in other places on his world, but still infrequently enough that, even as an adult, he viewed the rain with a certain childlike glee.

It was that which he loved as some of the crew loved their gods. The rain was that thing which was both beautiful and terrible, when it came. He had seen streets washed out in the flash floods, when the downpour overflowed the channels meant to hold it. He had watched the death that a swift-moving flood could bring, even as he danced in the rich glory of the life-giving rain. The water was the last god on Vulcan.

He carried that respect with him, even in space, thanking the replicated water of his showers with the dance of his home. It did not rain in space, and he would not let the water think he had begun to take it for granted. That way lay death, rational or not.


	3. Egotistical and Selfserving

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Characters:** Spock, Spock!Prime  
> **Rating:** PG  
> **Warnings:** None  
> **Notes:** Anonymouse wanted some non-shippy Spock!Prime hugs. Best way to get those was a bit of Spock &amp; Spock!Prime -- it's kind of a rewrite of the farewell at the shuttle.  
> 

* * *

**From this prompt:**  
Every time I see/think about Spock Prime, I just want to hug him! I can't be the only one...

Option A: 5 (or more/less) times someone wanted to hug Spock Prime, and 1 time the said "To hell with it" and actually hugged him. Bonus if it isn't Jim or his Papa that hugs him

Option B: A drabble/ficlet where someone hugs Spock Prime

There is no need for pairings, in fact, I'd prefer if there was no romance involved... but if you have to, Spock Prime/Pike has somehow wiggled itself into my brain.

* * *

It was like looking at the ghost of himself. Here he stood, in the shadow of his own image -- the image of a hero and a famed negotiator -- and realised how little faith he'd had in himself, before this. But, somewhere, he'd become the Alpha Quadrant's household Vulcan, and while that legacy was entirely intimidating, it was hard to stay intimidated by himself. _Embrace what you are_, he told himself, _and know that these days are coming_. It seemed like sound advice, even coming from the decidedly emotional half-Vulcan he would become.

But the Ambassador -- Selek, he called himself, now -- was strangely comfortable with those emotions. He had less of them, it seemed, because he wasn't upset at having them, and that was something it would take Spock a long time to learn. And for all that he burned with curiosity, there were some things Selek refused to share -- not to ruin the surprise, he claimed. In some ways, he thought he was envious of himself, in both directions -- Selek wanted to be younger, to do it all again, and Spock wanted the wisdom and the acceptance that came with age. But, each of them was a slightly different incarnation -- a slim shift in the structure of the universe. A butterfly flapped its wings on Risa, a sun went supernova, and two half-Vulcans lost everything they loved.

He'd said goodbye. Selek had made a joke of it, in that surprising manner he had, and Spock had started to walk away. But, something hung between them, unfinished.

"Ambassador," Spock said, quietly, turning back, "thank you."

Selek raised his eyebrow, and Spock could read every nuance of it. _For what?_ it asked. And, _you know you're going to, and I won't stop you_. And, _this is the beginning of becoming what you are, but don't imagine that my answers will be yours_.

"You left everything to preserve the things you had, for me and for Jim. I don't claim to understand that, but I think I would have done it." Spock crossed the space between them, again, looking into the air that separated them, rather than directly at Selek. "Give this to father, for me. Tell him I love him."

Nodding to himself, for confidence, Spock wrapped his arms around Selek, capturing his older self in an embrace that should have rippled the fabric of reality, and perhaps it did. It was a terribly un-Vulcan thing to do, but neither of them was _all_ Vulcan.

"I would say I love you, too, but that might be egotistical and self-serving," Spock joked, after Selek's example.

It was a new world -- one with a different future -- one in which he could be in two places at once, or in one place at the same time. In that moment, they were all of the above.


	4. Adrenaline

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Spock  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Warnings: Violence  
> Notes: For the latest challenge at spock100. (Yeah, I'm way behind on these.) According to Memory Alpha, TAS named three of the kids who picked on Spock. One of them was named Stark. And I, for one, refuse to consider a Spock who lost every barfight and won every war.

It happens so fast, fourteen-year-old Spock can't even feel it. He knows damned well that arms don't bend that way -- in fact, for that angle to make any logical sense, he'd need to have a second elbow, about three inches from the first, and it would have to be jointed about ninety degrees off from the real one. He lifts his head, eyes sparkling with amazement and cold passion.

"You have broken my arm, Stark."

Spock's voice is as flat as any Vulcan's -- perhaps moreso, in this instance -- and it is enough to raise the hair on the backs of the necks of the three slightly older boys who started with him. They know he should not be so stable, but adrenaline does strange things to a man, and stranger things to a Vulcan. There are three of them, and one of him, and he's only half-Vulcan. He shouldn't be a threat. But in that moment, he is the single most terrifying thing they have ever seen. In that moment, none of them doubt that vulkhansu and le-matya share an ancestor.

He doesn't remember swinging, but Stark crumples backward, bleeding from the mouth, and Spock follows him down. By the time the os'savensu breaks them apart, Spock's arm is swollen to an almost black-green, and his face is frozen in a mad rictus-grin, lips pulled back so far, they have split from the tension. He bites, claws, and snarls like a cornered le-matya, but finally falls limp after a hypospray to the neck. Fading out, he hears that Stark has a concussion and is missing two teeth. The corner of Spock's mouth twists up. He is satisfied.


End file.
